MISSION
Our mission is to highlight the contributions of women photographers to modern and contemporary art in order to rewrite the artistic canon and provoke social change. Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) began as a dynamic database showcasing the unique stories of women-identified Cuban photographers. Building on this success, WOPHA has expanded its geographic scope while retaining its core commitment to promote and research, in partnership with other organizations, the plurality of female, trans, queer, and other non-binary voices in photography.
HISTORY
Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by art curator Aldeide Delgado and artist Francisco Maso to research, promote, support, and educate on the role of women and those identified as women or non-binary in photography. The archive’s origins trace back to 2013 when Delgado created the project Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers.
The Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers is the first project to comprehensively collate the works of Cuban women photographers spanning the 19th century through the present. The Catalog, imbued with a distinct historiographic and critical character, is an interactive online platform that offers information for artists, curators, critics, and other cultural agents through a dynamic database of creators, publications, and exhibitions. As the primary aim of the Catalog is to locate, document, and acknowledge gaps in information on the contributors to the development of Cuban photography, WOPHA intentionally expands these efforts to an international scale, creating a space to celebrate women in the photographic arts.
WOPHA encourages the exhibition, collection, and active scholarship of works by women photographers, empowering art historians and art curators to share them more frequently with the public. Our activities include the digitization of historical archives, the creation of a center of information and specialized library of books about women photographers, the publication of catalogs and books, the presentation of lectures and workshops, the establishment of artist residencies and fellowships, and the development of online and physical exhibitions. We have a strong focus on historical research- producing rigorous academic content with particular emphasis on the diverse artistic production of Latin American and Latinx communities, including photographers from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and artists of Latin American descent living and working in the United States.
*We embrace the term women as a political subject who recognizes that there are different ways to be a woman according to class, race, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed, ability and gender. It is inclusive of all cis and trans women in addition to any person who identifies as woman.